


ring around you

by foreverstudent



Series: we two, begin (again) [4]
Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, EXO (Band), SHINee, Super Junior
Genre: Changmin forever Yunho's baby, Gen, Homin - Freeform, SM Family, SM Town Osaka 2015, Yunho is an overprotective hyung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverstudent/pseuds/foreverstudent
Summary: Changmin is not looking forward to performing alone at SM Town Osaka 2015.But even when he's not on stage with him, Yunho somehow manages to look out for his maknae -- with lots of help.Prequel now up: the best part of me is you
Relationships: Jung Yunho & Shim Changmin, Jung Yunho/Shim Changmin
Series: we two, begin (again) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748920
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	ring around you

Changmin sighs heavily as he unloads his luggage and flops down onto his bed in the spacious hotel room assigned to him for the duration of SM Town Osaka. Thank God it’s not in Tokyo, because then he’ll be forced to stay at their shared apartment, and it’ll feel even lonelier. The impartial sameness of a hotel room helps — a bit.

He scrolls through his phone and contemplates sending a text, or maybe even calling, but he immediately decides against it. “Pull yourself together, Shim,” Changmin mutters to himself as he clicks off his phone and throws an arm over his eyes. He can’t appear too clingy, can’t he? Can’t appear too obviously lonely, can’t appear to be _absolutely terrified_ at the thought of performing as TVXQ alone…

He is jerked out of his thoughts by his phone’s sudden ringing, and without looking he answers and holds the phone to his ear. 

“Hello?” he says morosely. 

“Yah, where are you?” Kyuhyun’s voice comes through, loud and clear. 

“Hotel room,” Changmin replies lazily, really not in the mood. 

“Have you eaten yet?” his friend asks, and Changmin is suddenly aware of his empty stomach.

“I’m taking that as a no,” Kyuhyun says when Changmin takes too long to answer. “Come over! We ordered way too much food.” 

Changmin sighs, because he knows what Kyuhyun is doing. Even though it’s terribly obvious, he can’t help but be grateful at his friend’s efforts to keep him company. And the Super Junior members are always fun. 

“Coming,” Changmin says, getting up with a groan and making his way out of the hotel room. Super Junior’s room is a few floors up, and when he gets there, it’s already absolute chaos. Kyuhyun greets him with his usual smirk and shoves enormous amounts of Japanese food and beer at him, ignoring Changmin’s protests of practice the next day. 

For a few hours, Changmin loses himself in Super Junior’s never-ending laughter, downing beer after beer until Kyuhyun and Siwon walk him back to his own room and he collapses onto the crisp sheets. He barely registers Kyuhyun taking off his shoes and Siwon covering him up with the blanket. The warmth quickly pulls him under, and he strains to stay awake with no success. 

But just before he drops off to sleep, he thinks he hears the whispered conversation of the two. 

“You think we did enough?”

“I think so. I’ll stay with him through the whole thing anyway.”

“He’s worried, you know.”

A snort. “I know. But he’ll be fine. I’ll let the others know he might be late, but he’s drunk more than this and woken up fine…”

The two make their way out the door, still chattering softly, switching off the lights as they go, and Changmin slips into a dreamless sleep. 

* * *

Changmin wakes to the sound of his alarm the next morning and his manager knocking on his door. Last night already forgotten, inwardly thanking whatever genes he had inherited that somehow made him immune to hangovers, Changmin curses as he rushes around the hotel room and makes himself presentable. He is already late to his first schedule. Rushing out the room with multiple apologies to his frazzled manager, Changmin jumps into the car and heads to the rented building for last-minute practice. 

SHINee’s Key and Taemin are already in the studio, the two of them jumping up immediately at his entrance. “Sorry I’m late,” Changmin apologizes, but the other two don’t seem to mind. They quickly take their positions and wait for Changmin to finish some quick stretches. “Thanks for doing this with me,” he says warmly.

“It’s okay, hyung,” Taemin blurts out “We knew you’d be running late.” Beside him, Key’s eyes widen slightly and he gives Taemin an urgent nudge. 

Changmin stops stretching and looks at the two suspiciously through the mirror. “You did?” 

Jumpy, Taemin suddenly avoids his eyes. “Uh…”

“But you’re here now, hyung!” Key cuts in smoothly, “And I actually had some questions about the second verse of the song…”

Distracted, Changmin gets caught up in the choreography of Mirotic and forgets about Taemin’s remark. He misses the pointed look that Key gives his younger member, misses the way that Taemin spends the rest of the practice unusually quiet, as though properly chastised. 

Still, it’s unusual how quick the two learn. Changmin knows that sunbae groups’ dances are usually learned by younger groups even as trainees, but the two are unusually quick. There’s something in the way they move and execute the choreography that feels jarringly familiar. 

They get through the dance quickly enough that Changmin calls for a break halfway through. “The two of you are fast,” he compliments, watching their reaction in the mirror. The two just look at each other and bow towards him, accepting the compliment like good juniors. 

“Did you learn this beforehand?” Changmin asks, and he doesn’t know if he’s imagining it, but he thinks he can see a bit of panic come into Key’s eyes. 

This time, it’s Taemin who answers. “Of course, hyung! Mirotic is legendary, we all learned the dance as trainees waiting to debut…”

What follows is the typical gushing about TVXQ that Changmin only half-listens to, but he nods and smiles all the same because the SHINee maknae is too cute for his own good. Beside him, Key almost looks… _relieved?_

Huh. 

* * *

In the afternoon, Key stays while Taemin goes back to their hotel, and the EXO members Baekhyun, Suho, and Xiumin arrive to practice the TVXQ medley of We Are! and Somebody to Love. There’s minimal choreography to be learned here, since most of it will be them moving around the dome and interacting with an audience, but Changmin is more excited (and apprehensive) about the vocals. There was a reason why BoA picked four other singers for this performance. 

“So…” Changmin sighs. No beating around the bush here. “Let’s assign vocal parts.”

The other four look at each other and then look back at him, but they don’t look as awkward and confused as Changmin expected them to be. Key nudges Suho ( _what is with this dongsaeng and his nudging?_ ), and the EXO leader suddenly speaks up. “Hyung?”

“Yes?” Changmin says absentmindedly, marking the song lyrics on the whiteboard as he strained to remember what the two songs sounded like when sung by five. It had been…a long time.

“We’ve all been listening to the song,” Suho says tentatively, “and we’re all big fans of TVXQ,” — Xiumin nodding aggressively — “so we think we might know the harmonies already.”

Changmin turns around. “Are you sure?” he asks skeptically. Suho just nods.

“All five of us?” Xiumin keeps nodding. “Even with a good ear, it can be hard to pick out all of it,” Changmin questions.

“Let us try, hyung,” Baekhyun pipes up. “You can critique us after, and then maybe we can finish earlier.” With the headache slowly building in the base of Changmin’s head, finishing earlier doesn’t sound so bad. 

“Okay,” Changmin exhales. “Fine. Who’s taking Yunho-hyung’s part?” Suho raises his hand.

“Junsu-hyung?” Xiumin.

“Yoochun-hyung?” Key.

“Jaejoong-hyung?” Baekhyun. 

“Well, okay,” Changmin shrugs, going over to the player and putting on the MR. “Let’s try it.”

Mere minutes later, after running through the two songs, Changmin is amazed. The younger singers weren’t kidding when they said they knew the harmonies. 

During break, Changmin takes the opportunity to ask. “Did you practice without me or something?” Changmin jokes. “That was amazing! It was like…like hearing five of us again,” he says, without a hint of malice. It did, and he is infinitely grateful to the other four for giving him this precious piece of a lost past. 

The four look at each other with gleeful smiles and bow, accepting the compliment much like Taemin and Key earlier. “We’re glad you liked it, hyung,” Suho says softly. 

Changmin excuses himself to go to the bathroom after that, because unexpected emotions sometimes need to be dealt with alone. He emerges minutes later and reenters the practice room to find the four clustered together around Suho’s phone, chattering excitedly. 

“What’s so interesting?” Changmin asks the younger boys, curious as to why they’re all crowded around Suho. He isn’t _that_ old, thank you very much. He’s settling into the 4th industrial revolution just fine. 

But with his arrival, the chatter suddenly dies down, Suho keeping his phone immediately and looking at his members frantically. 

“There’s a new meme going around,” Baekhyun says lamely, and by the look on his face, Changmin thinks Key feels the sudden urge to facepalm. 

“Oh, what is it?” Changmin says, curiosity piqued. He can understand memes — if he tries, that is. Who knew the 4th industrial revolution would involve so many vague references to pop culture.

“Uh…uh…”

“Cat climbing into a toilet,” Key deadpans, and the rest of them actually smile and chuckle, although more nervously than Changmin thinks a cat climbing into a toilet should warrant.

“Huh. Well, if you guys think that’s funny…” Changmin says, shrugging his shoulders as he walks over to the player to restart the MR. “Let’s go two more times each song, then I think we can call it a day.”

The four sing flawlessly every round, and Changmin really has very little to comment on. “You really did listen to us as five, huh?” he asks out of the blue, when they are all gathering their things to leave the practice room. 

He doesn’t notice the four of them freeze and look at each other before Xiumin answers. “We listened well, hyung,” the younger singer says, an unreadable look in his face that Changmin can’t seem to place. There’s also double meaning in his answer that Changmin can’t seem to unravel, no matter how hard he tries. 

The four leave in a flurry of bows and goodbyes and promises to sing well for the SM Town stage, and Changmin is left with the whiteboard detailing the five voices he knew — _knows_ — by heart. It’s a chilling feeling, knowing that he’ll be the only one out of that five on the stage tomorrow — but the dongsaengs are there.

It’s not the same harmony, but it’s beautiful in its own way.

* * *

His manager hands him his phone right before he goes on stage. “For you.”

Changmin just takes it, not expecting the very familiar voice on the other line. “Changmin-ah.”

It takes all of Changmin’s restraint not to gasp. “Hyung,” he manages, although he is very sure his eyes are now bulging out of his skull, judging by his manager’s amused reactions. 

“Yep, it’s me,” Yunho chuckles. “Just wanted to see how you were doing before the stage.”

“I’m…okay, I guess,” Changmin exhales. “It wasn’t easy getting here.”

“No, I guess it wasn’t,” Yunho says sympathetically. “I’m glad you have others there with you, though.” A noise comes over the line, one that sounds suspiciously like a hand clapped over a mouth that has said too much.

Changmin narrows his eyes. “Yes, everyone has been very helpful,” he says.

“I’m glad,” Yunho chokes out, and the nervous coughing is a dead giveaway. Changmin sits up straighter. His hyung was never a very good liar. 

“Hyung…” Changmin says slowly as he puts two and two together. “Were you the one who told Super Junior to keep me company…”

“Well, yes, but Kyuhyun’s your best friend and he said he was going to do it anyway…”

“And SHINee? Taemin and Key?”

“Uh…yes? I figured they’d need help with the choreography…”

“EXO?”

“They needed help with the harmonies!”

“Hyuuuung,” Changmin whines. “What, did you call the whole SM Town and leave them instructions too?”

Silence passes on the other line, and Changmin thinks he can’t blush any redder. “Hyung!”

“Not the _whole_ SM Town,” Yunho finally says defensively, and Changmin can imagine his hyung’s embarrassed face, shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck while avoiding Changmin’s eyes. _Maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t here,_ Changmin reasoned, o _r else I would have already strangled him._

“Who else did — you know what, never mind,” Changmin groans. “I don’t want to know.”

Yunho doesn’t reply to that, and Changmin thinks he might have ended the call. “Hyung?”

“Are you mad?” Yunho asks timidly, and Changmin will never be able to reconcile that voice with the passionate hyung that he knows. From time to time, Jung Yunho still surprises him. 

Changmin just sighs. “No,” he admits. “I guess…I just miss you, hyung,” he finally says through gritted teeth, and the tips of his ears grow warm. “Kyu’s great, and SHINee and EXO aren’t bad, but…”

_But they’re not you._

“But they’re not Tohoshinki,” Changmin finishes lamely. He hopes Yunho gets it. His hyung can be unbelievably obtuse at times, but miraculously seems to understand everything affectionate that Changmin can’t bring himself to say out loud. 

“Awww, I miss you too, Changdola,” Yunho replies warmly, and the fond nickname almost brings tears to Changmin’s eyes. He just clutches the phone tighter. 

“I wish I could be there too,” Yunho continues, and Changmin wants to beg him to stop, becauseimagining him here hurts so much when Changmin knows the reality. “But I can’t right now, so I had to tell everyone else to be there for you,” Yunho chuckles, but Changmin can hear the undercurrent of thick emotion in his hyung’s voice. 

“Take over that stage, Changmin-ah,” Yunho says suddenly, and Changmin can hear the sudden switch in tone from Yunho, sappy hyung, to U-Know Yunho, passion mansour. Changmin just holds on to every word, as though his hyung’s passion could somehow seep through the phone and energize him somehow. God knows he needs it for the stage that looks bigger than usual. 

“I believe in you,” Yunho says confidently, and Changmin is really about to cry because _this_ is the most lethal combination: the personal Jung Yunho mixed with the fiery U-Know Yunho, a concentrated mix of passion and belief culminating in an unshakeable _trust_ that Changmin has always been afraid to find himself unworthy of. 

“Give them something to wait for,” his hyung says, and it might sound like another incredibly high expectation, but Changmin knows what he means. Yunho is asking him to make a promise on his behalf, and Changmin intends to honor his word.

“And when we come back, you and me,” Yunho continues, and Changmin recognizes that tone too, dreamy and full of hope. How often had he clung to that voice throughout the years? “You and me — we’ll make it worth the wait.”

“Thanks, hyung,” Changmin says finally, swallowing back the tears. Yunho just stays quiet, but Changmin can imagine the fond smile he must be wearing in return. 

“I’m wearing your shirt, you know,” Changmin says suddenly, before the conversation can go down paths they cannot take — not now, at least. 

Yunho laughs. “I know. Manager-hyung texted me about you pestering the coordi noonas to bring part of my wardrobe.”

“You mean manager-hyung…ugh, fine,” Changmin says, rolling his eyes and mouthing ‘spy’ at his grinning manager, who simply shrugs and signals that he has 15 minutes before he has to go on stage. 

“It’s not just the shirt,” Changmin says quietly, and Yunho softens his voice too. “I know. The ring, right?”

Changmin nods, even though he knows Yunho can’t see. The ring, his hyung’s favorite, glints on his hand like a reassuring wink. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll show it to the cameras, let the fans go crazy.”

Yunho snorts. “Sure. You want to _really_ make them go crazy? Lose the shirt.”

“Haha,” Changmin says dryly. “That would be kind of missing the point if I wanted to show my Yunho hyung was there with me on stage, right?”

Stunned silence meets him on the other end. When Yunho finally speaks, it sounds like this time, _he’s_ the one close to tears. “Miiin…” 

“What, I can’t be sappy and sentimental too?” Changmin smirks. Point to Changmin. 

“Of course you can! I—I…” His hyung is stuttering now, which means Changmin has succeeded in making him tongue-tied — a feat, especially for U-Know Yunho. 

“I’ll call you after the concert, hyung,” Changmin interrupts Yunho’s nonsensical blabbering, noticing his manager signal 10 minutes left.

“Wait, Changmin!”  


“What?” His manager is literally pulling him out of the dressing room now, and Changmin just lets him, briskly walking through the maze that will bring him to his designated stage lift. The backstage noise and music gets louder, and he’s straining to hear the call. “Hyung? I really am about to go on now…"

“Love you!” Yunho blurts out suddenly, and the call ends, the abrupt beeping leaving Changmin at a loss. 

“Pabo,” Changmin huffs, texting a quick message before tossing the phone to his manager and getting ready for his stage. 

In Korea, Yunho waits on edge for news, photos, or videos of Changmin’s stage from any one of the dozens of spies he’d unashamedly recruited for this mission; but the first text he receives is from Changmin himself. 

_Love you too, hyung. This one’s for you._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not that good at music so I don't actually know who sang whose part haha please take that part with a grain of salt. 
> 
> Thinking of writing Yunho's POV for this one! Let me know if you'd like to see it (or if anyone is still reading Homin fic in 2020 haha).
> 
> ALSO, posting this on the day of TVXQ's Beyond Live concert! This time they're together <3


End file.
